Hungarians don’t trust the news media

Hvg.hu writes that the general mistrust towards Hungarian media is getting worse and worse, as it turnes according to the Digital News Media Report 2017, which was presented last week on the GEN Summit, a conference about media innovation.

According to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, the Hungarian government increased its direct control over the media in 2016 with changes in ownership, distribution of state advertising and campaigns against external and internal critical voices.

“The public service media news is strongly pro-government, with critical voices barely present and factual errors frequent, while the online sphere is still vibrant and plural, with a wide range of political and news portals/blogs operating.”

One of the consequences of the process that has been going on in the Hungarian media industry is that the country has fallen into the group of lagmen concerning media trust. According to the survey, the overall trust in news media is only 31% in Hungary, while it is 62% in the case of Finland, which is in the lead. However, 53% of news consumers trust the sources they choose to get information from, which is the indicator of the polarised situation.